A sign of what's to come?

Study predicts spike in days of extreme heat, and Valley residents could be among most vulnerable

STOCKTON - On especially hot days, 35-year-old Paco Galvan must choose between his work and his health. He stopped picking pears at noon this week, which will make it that much harder to pay the electric bill.

It is difficult to say if last week's heat wave, or any other, can be directly tied to human-caused climate change. Many natural factors also influence day-to-day temperatures and weather condition...

» Read more

X

Was it global warming?

It is difficult to say if last week's heat wave, or any other, can be directly tied to human-caused climate change. Many natural factors also influence day-to-day temperatures and weather conditions, as climate change skeptics point out. Stockton actually enjoyed relatively cool summers in 2010 and 2011.

Just last week, however, a leading climate scientist and activist released a study claiming "with a high degree of confidence" that last year's extreme heat in Texas and Oklahoma, and 2010 heat waves in Russia and the Middle East, are a consequence of climate change.

That's because extreme climate anomalies have become more common, NASA scientist James Hansen found. The changes are so pronounced, he said, that perceptive people old enough to remember the weather as far back as 1950 should be able to notice change during the summertime.

» Social News

STOCKTON - On especially hot days, 35-year-old Paco Galvan must choose between his work and his health. He stopped picking pears at noon this week, which will make it that much harder to pay the electric bill.

Not that paying the bill helps. The air conditioner in Galvan's house is so weak it cools only one room. It is hard to sleep at night for Galvan and his four children.

Not far from his home off Church Street, Analicia Garcia pushed a stroller toward Union Square where her daughter would be dropped off by the school bus Wednesday. Her sons wrestled over a bottle of ice water. On days like this, the boys take cold showers every couple of hours; like Galvan, the family's air conditioner is inadequate, and they have no car to escape to a cool shopping mall or movie theater.

The south Stockton neighborhood that Galvan and Garcia share is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of future climate change, a Bay Area think tank has found in a new study.

As uncomfortable as life was this past week - Stockton's six-day heat wave, the longest since 2009, broke Wednesday - the number of days at or above 101 degrees is expected to increase anywhere from four to seven times by the end of the century, the Oakland-based Pacific Institute found.

That could mean enduring 50 days of extreme heat each summer, although few reading this might live to see such times.

"Oh, wow," Galvan said.

"We just get no love down here," he said. "If it happens, it happens. Nothing we can do about it. But people are going to suffer. Some people are sitting in these houses with no air conditioning, no nothing."

The Pacific Institute's study attempts to put a human face on climate change, a complex issue often left to academics and politicians. The study finds that it is everyday people, however - millions of Californians, many of them in the Central Valley - who may eventually be most affected.

Residents living between Main Street in the north and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the south, and between Aurora Street in the west and Wilson Way in the east, are more vulnerable than any other residents in the county, the study finds. They are among the most vulnerable in California.

"This is a new way of thinking about climate change," said Heather Cooley, lead author of the study that was sponsored by the California Energy Commission. "One of the points we really wanted to make is there's been a lot of emphasis and focus on understanding climate impacts, but less thinking about how individuals are going to be impacted."

That impact can be measured in many ways.

In Galvan's neighborhood, the top concern is the number of people who work outdoors - just as he does, picking pears. Using census data, the institute reports that 61 percent of residents there toil under the hot sun.

Other high-ranking factors include the number of unemployed residents and those lacking a high school diploma, since residents with less money might be less able to protect themselves.

Also to be considered are the number of elderly residents who are physically more susceptible to heat, and the area's high rate of women with infants.

That residents in some neighborhoods suffer greatly from extreme heat is not news to local public health officials. The county sends outreach workers on 100-plus degree days to make sure residents know how to take care of themselves.

But not all counties have these kinds of programs, Cooley said. The goal of the study is to influence policymakers to take action assist these neighborhoods.

"I think there's a number of people starting to have that dialogue," she said.

Altogether, the institute found 216,000 San Joaquin County residents have some degree of "high vulnerability" to climate change; 329,000 residents were classified as medium-vulnerability, and 120,000 were low.

The highest vulnerabilities were found in the core of the biggest cities, including Stockton, Lodi and Tracy.

For now, the Delta breezes that kicked up late Tuesday ended a heat wave that had been expected to drag on several more days. Residents came outside with no small amount of relief.

Galvan stood on the street corner Wednesday afternoon talking with his friend, Angel Luis. Luis' boys splashed around with a hose and an inflatable raft. "Mucho, mucho!" 5-year-old Edgar Gonzales shouted, asking his brother, Jesus, to fill the raft up to the brim.

Clothes were drying on a line in front of the house. In this neighborhood, tarps fill in for shade structures, and the paint peels on old homes battered by sun and rain over many decades.